I guess I'm not busy...

I woke up and immediately regretted it. The sun was shining through the smallest possible split of my curtains, right into my eye. Getting up, I looked around my room, just to make sure that my siblings hadn't come in and taken any of my stuff.

"All secure," I said. Moving on to getting dressed, I picked out my favorite shirt-green with teal stripes-and put it on. Just as I had finished putting my pants on, I heard my dad call me downstairs for breakfast.

"Come on kids, get down here! Your mother's making pancakes!" Yum! Pancakes are great.

"Coming!" I yelled, and scrambled out the door to my room, running to the stairs. I knew that if I wasn't the first to the table, my siblings would try to hoard the food. Though they rarely succeeded, it was still annoying. I got downstairs just as my older sister, Novi, got out of the door to her room.

"Hey Marcus, save some pancakes for me!" She laughed then grabbed the stairwell bannister and slid down. Despite being the oldest at sixteen, she was a bit reckless. I'm more controlled than her, or at least that's what Mom says. As I sat down to grab myself a big pancake and a piece of bacon, Vincent, my younger brother, snuck out from under the chair I was sitting in and snatched MY piece of bacon off my plate and shoved it in his mouth.

"Nyah!" He stuck out his tongue at me and grabbed his piece of bacon.

"Mom! Vincent took my bacon!" Mom suddenly jerked around and stared Vincent right in the eyes. Bad news for him. No one can take Mom's stare, not even Novi.

"Vincent, give your brother your piece of bacon right now, or I'll make you sit away from the table." Mom suddenly looked at Dad. Uh-oh, Dad didn't look happy.

"Vincent, that's the second time this week. If you do it again, you will not get bacon for two days. Understood?" Vincent nodded and hastily put his bacon on my plate. Man, justice feels good, as long as it doesn't happen to me.

"Hey Marcus," said Novi. "Pass me a panca-." Suddenly she stopped speaking. I was a little surprised, but then I looked at the rest of my family. Vincent was frozen mid-chew, and Dad was stuck pouring Mom a little bit of coffee. The coffee wasn't moving either.

"Well, I've either become the Flash, or something very wrong is going on." I stood up from my chair and looked around. The microwave wouldn't turn on, the T.V. was stuck too, but when I flipped through one of Dad's books, it was completely fine. "That's not right," I said, and put the book down. Then I heard a knock at the door.

Opening the door, I saw a strange man standing on our porch. He was wearing a dark red jumpsuit, and had a black eyepatch and a matching bandanna.

"Hello," he said. "My name is Seal. I take it you haven't heard of me?" I shook my head. "That's fine, considering I don't exist yet." I blinked my eyes a couple times, and he was still there.

"Excuse me, but you very plainly exist. I can see you, and hear you." He chuckled slightly.

"What I mean is I'm from the future. About eighty years forward, actually." He invited himself in and sat down on our living room chair.

"Why are you here then? If you're from the future, then why are you in the past? So far back too," I sat down across from him in our recliner and stared right at him. Maybe I could Mom-stare him to tell the truth.

"Since you asked so nicely, I'll tell you," he walked over to the kitchen and grabbed an apple. "I'm a bounty hunter." He took a bite of his apple.

"Oh no." That wasn't good. Bounty hunters kill people for money. If he was aiming at me or my family, then this guy was bad news. Heck, even if he wasn't going for my family, I wasn't going to let him just kill someone else. "Who are you here to get?" I just had to know.

He took a long, hard look at me, and then said, "I'm here to get your sister." He was here to get Novi?! I couldn't let that happen!

"Um, why do you need to get rid of her?" This could buy me some time, while I went to grab my baseball bat from the toy box next to Seal.

"She's a wanted criminal in all 52 states. Well, except for in California. I was hired by the government to stop her before she becomes a threat." He held up a little gadget with a dial on it. "This is an experimental machine. It can transport anyone back in time, or back to their original starting point. It freezes time too. So I don't have to worry about anyone getting in my way." He stared long and hard at me. "Except you. For some reason, you seem unaffected by this." He dangled the machine in front of me.

A million thoughts raced through my head. Novi, a criminal?! Time travel?! Me being immune?! Why me? But then I remembered something.

"Didn't you say that you were from eighty years in the future?"

"Yeah, so?"

"How is my sister still alive and doing crime at, umm, ninety six years old?" I knew he couldn't answer that.

Seal remained nonchalant. "She made an de-aging serum, and used it on herself. Then when she looked twenty something, she made an anti-aging serum, just for good measure, and used that. She doesn't age at all anymore."

I sat there stunned. That didn't sound possible. But then again, neither did the idea of my entire household being frozen in time and space, and yet that had happened.

"What did she do to make herself a criminal?"

Seal looked at me and sighed. "She killed you."

"What?!!" I couldn't believe that. Novi and I had our differences, sure, but she would never kill me.

"Yep. So if you want to live, let me do my job." He frowned at me. I did not expect to make a choice this important when I woke up this morning.

"Let me think about this." I got a little time to think about this.

"Fine. You got ten minutes." He shrugged and kept eating his apple.

I needed to think long and hard about this. This is an important decision.

I mean, it's only the fate of me and my sister at stake...